Paul French

In her memoirs, Wallis Simpson described her time in China as her Lotus Year, referring to Homer’s Lotus Eaters, a group living in a state of dreamy forgetfulness, never to return home. That year, however, was also used to damn her in the eyes of the British Establishment. Determined to ‘save’ the monarchy, the British government’s ‘China Dossier’ of Wallis’s...

In her memoirs, Wallis Simpson described her time in China as her ‘Lotus Year’, referring to Homer’s Lotus Eaters, a group living in a state of dreamy forgetfulness, never to return home. That year, however, was also used to damn her in the eyes of the British Establishment. Determined to ‘save’ the monarchy, the British government’s ‘China Dossier’ of Wallis’s...

Paul French resurrects the denizens of old Shanghai's badlands, the drug-running, the gambling, and the graft, vividly restoring this long overlooked side of the city's history. Shanghai, 1941–In a city under siege unfolds an astonishing story of two men whose lives intertwine in crime and twisted friendship. Viennese Joe Farren rose to fame by cashing in on Shanghai's desperate pleasure...

Through portraits of eight White Russians, Americans and Europeans who lived and worked in the Badlands in the 1920s and '30s, Paul French brings the area and its era vividly to life. A small warren of narrow hutongs, the Badlands sat just inside the eastern flank of the Tartar Wall, which at that time enclosed the old Imperial City of...